Electronic communication has become an indispensable business and personal tool. Applications such as email, instant messaging, SMS texting, Twitter, social networking sites, Bulletin Boards, Collaboration Software, and the like have become ubiquitous and are used extensively in lieu of, or in combination with, more conventional communications methods such as postal mail, telephone communication, and in person meetings.
As electronic communication has supplemented and replaced prior communication techniques its importance as evidence in transactions has grown. Particularly in litigation and compliance, due in part to the impact of Sarbanes-Oxley and other corporate governance requirements, the preservation and production of email is required in every jurisdiction.
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have been expanded to cover electronically stored information (ESI) including emails and other types of electronic communication. This type of information must be preserved and produced in a controversy as well as in the normal course of corporate governance and compliance. A difficulty in producing electronic communications is the need to produce all the electronic communications required and only the electronic communications that are required of a party to produce. Failure to produce all requested electronic communications can result in potential loss of rights and/or penalties from governing bodies such as the SEC. Producing more electronic communications than are required can breach confidentiality and put a litigant or company in the position of revealing data that would otherwise have remained confidential.
In addition to mandated production of communications, there are other reasons to search, sort, manipulate, and view communications databases. Information and trends can be gleaned from collections of communications and messages. This applies to collections of emails, bulletin board postings, SMS messages, Facebook postings and comments, Twitter feeds, and other communications.
The prior art does not have suitable systems for viewing large collections of communications and presenting them in a way that can be visually useful.